Every quarter the Friends of Broomfield Park hold an open meeting for members of the public, attended by the committee, representatives of Enfield Council and the Parks Police. If you have specific topics for the committee to consider please email the
Secretary

Agenda
1.FoBP Chairman's Welcome
2.Update from the Parks Police
3.Condition of the Park Report
4.Gardening Projects & Conservatory
5.Broomfield House – current state of play
6.New Initiative Ideas
7.Any other business

D. Honnor (DH) issued latest report in early June. Since then:
• The path from Broomfield Lane to Aldemans Hill has been tarmacked.
• the path running along Broomfield Lane is nearing completion
• the water feature in the conservatory has been repaired by a committee member, preventing further leakage

Remarks from T. Richards (LBE):
• Spoken with T Corrigan (LBE) to chase outstanding conservatory water leak
• Paths still awaiting completion, nearly finished
• Large blue recycling bin has been placed in top N.E. corner of the park. Also plans to install one near football changing rooms and by the tennis courts. These bins should be locked and for council use only.

Other issues raised by DH:
• Still no life saving equipment, this is considered a high risk.
• Despiting council hiring out the football pitch little work appears to be carried out to maintain to a suitable standard.
• At the entrance to the main gate, again recently repaired, there should be a clear sign noting ’Height Limitation’

Action: Trevor to chase signage as it should already have been carried out.

Sunday Market Review
Following a ’wide ranging’ meeting with LBE and local groups, including FoBP, discussing the merits of a pilot scheme to move the Sunday Community market to Broomfield Park: the general outcome was non-conclusive.

Since this meeting, the state of play appears that realistically this pilot scheme will not go ahead (at least this summer) due to time delay and feasibility issues from the stallholders point of view.

4. Gardening Projects and Conservatory

4.1Love Parks Week 23rd – 31st July

• Saturday, 23rd July Open Garden at Arnos Lodge. Fund raising event for Conservatory planting.
• Conservatory Openings (from 2.30-4.30pm) will also include Monday and Friday during this week as well as the usual Wednesday and Sunday openings.
• Sunday 31st July between 2.30 – 4.30pm is an Art Activity Group for children, themed around plants including making 3D cactus and ‘tropical’ tissue paper pompoms.

£2,435 Grassroot funding money has been awarded and received out of £3,000 applied for. This has to be spent before the end of September. In this economic climate this is considered an excellent result and due thanks were given to Tony Elliot, Sue Younger and Elizabeth Dobbie for their hard work on building a strong application.

5. Fund Raising Ideas
Philip Chard (PC) announces his idea for a Kenwood House-style ‘posh nosh’ event which could be established on an annual basis with the primary function to raise funds directly for the Friends of Broomfield Park to reinvest in further events. PC outlines how events can be ‘for the community by the community’ and that it is important for the Friends to take ownership, to raise their profile and market themselves effectively.

Action: Chairman to forward H. Anderson’s (LBE) Parks Event Listings document to PC who will put it on the FoBP website to update the community of forthcoming events.

Laki Marangos mentioned the Friend’s interest in putting forward an application for grant funding that would allow a ‘Green Gym’ to be installed in the park. T. Richards agrees this would be popular though consultation would be required: the general feeling of the meeting showed strong support for the idea, particularly among attendees who had seen similar equipment in other parks.

6. Broomfield House
Following the recent announcement that the GLA are no longer supporting the funding for this project, Tony Elliot recapped on the progression of events in recent months.

MP D. Burrowes (DB) confirmed that the current GLA funding stream (TFS) is no longer available though he stressed that Richard Blakeway, Housing Advisor to Boris Johnson, states the Mayor is committed to Broomfield House. DB highlighted two options for moving forward with current state of play:

1. National Empty House Funding, a £100m pot to be shared from the autumn, 2011.
2. Empty Homes Scheme has an under-spend for the North Sub region of £8.6m. As this needs reallocation (and is held by the Boroughs themselves) DB is of the opinion that the Broomfield House project is in a strong position to apply for this funding.

DB remarks that the public emailing their council is a simple way to show local support in the LBE placing a bid for such funding.
DB also notifies meeting that plans for redeveloping Southgate Town Hall are to be put out for consultation in July 2011.

There was an open discussion on whether any actions are to be taken:

• It was felt there is a need to clarify whether FoBP should concern itself with the Park only, a separate entity from the House.
• On from this, should FoBP become more involved with other local community groups and how cohesive and effective would this be.
• Issues were raised around whether the group lacks a single voice on the issue of the House. Potentially a weak point in terms of consultation and liaising with the council.
• Specific to the on-going issue of 18 units v. 20 units a member of public who works in the housing association sector considers that cafes and public areas are in fact not regarded as a negative by the industry, that it makes no difference to schemes. He therefore concludes the council must be pushing for 20 units for profitability and to reduce their responsibility of care of any public space.

Action: agreed that FoBP (Chair and Secretary) to write to Cllr Del Goddard and Leader of the Council Doug Taylor to set up a meeting to request sight of the Green Issues report (feedback from the recent public consultation exercise) which has so far not been released, the feasibility study and to ascertain what the council anticipate doing next.